Life is complicated, isn’t it? Recently, I was working at the front desk at work, a co-working space in Seattle. An elderly lady was sitting in stillness for almost two hours in the sunlight, her veined hands endlessly turning a brochure over and over. A half hour before closing, I decided to check on her. Turns out she has dementia. She didn’t know who had dropped her off or who was picking her up. She just knew she was waiting for someone. I tried to figure out how I could help her. I didn’t want to kick her out but couldn’t just leave her there.

Eventually, we figured out that someone in a meeting upstairs had left her in the lobby. Just left her there. Didn’t say anything to us. Didn’t leave a note with her just in case. The woman didn’t even have ID save a bus pass with her name on it.

I imagine it’s hard to care for a parent with dementia. I know that this kind of thing often ends up in the hands of middle-aged women who are trying to make a living and have a career. Sometimes they are women with children they are still raising.

And yet here I was, working through what to DO because that’s also part of life. Borders need to be tended. Not without compassion but they do. I was comforted to know that this woman wasn’t one of the homeless women that walk through our doors seeking a place to sit and be. I was comforted to know that she had a bed to sleep in.

The situation still makes my heart ache though. What if the woman would have wandered outside? What if she was one of the many people in our city/world who don’t have a home, who don’t have a safety net underneath them? We say we need to open our borders to everyone but I work in a place that cannot house homeless people no matter how much we want to. No matter how kind we are, this isn’t possible. The world is messy and complicated. We need to honor that complexity. We need to speak out and we also need to listen. We need to care and to value care and we need to have some sort of system in place to manage care. If we see everything as either/or and engage in polemics, we are lost.

Let’s find our way.

Let’s find each other.

Let’s love each other.

Audre Lorde said, “It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.”

But how do we do that? How do we celebrate differences? At the Pride parade this year here in Seattle and made way through downtown on my bike. Stopping to watch the parade, I was so full of love for all the people I saw represented. All across the spectrums of age, gender and ethnicity, people were smiling and cheering. I talked to a police officer who was standing at a corner. I said, “Wow. You must be so warm in that uniform!” She said, “You have no idea.”

I thanked her for being there. I’ve marched in Pride twice with my child, the first time right after the Pulse shooting had happened. The police made me feel so safe all lined up to contain the fabulous. They were part of the love fest that is Pride just as much as anyone else. They tend the borders that contain the beauty and joy.

Love, like life, is filled with ambiguity, isn’t it? Holding various perspectives takes so much practice and an ocean of compassion. It requires a practice of inquiry and a release of assumptions. It requires patience but also a kind of gentle ferocity. We have to find our yeses and both our hard and soft noes. We have to both find our voice and our listening ears. We also have to take action. It’s easy to get paralyzed when things seem so out of control so we take the actions we can.

I gave blood recently. They told me that my one pint of blood could save 3 lives. I find that astonishing. I can save lives I will never know. I don’t know who will receive my blood and I don’t care. Their ideology is less important to me than their humanity. None of us can save every life and working through border issues, whether inside our hearts or on land is one of the humanitarian issues of our times.

I’ve taken to daily mediation walks. It’s nourishing to my spirit and helps ground me to my purpose. I walk for 30 minutes then journal until I feel complete. Here is today’s reflection:

A cat visits, twining itself around my legs for a while. I pet it and also just let it be , allowing it to enjoy the feeling of its fur on my bare legs (I enjoyed that too).

A little girl in a black, velvet dress rocks gently in a swing. The kind of swing with a back. She smiles. I tell her she looks peaceful. She nods.

Three older girls are playing on the hill above her. In the dirt. The kick it up then oddly dust themselves off. Then get dirty again. I want to tell them it’s okay to be dirty. To get dirty and messy and stay that way.

A hummingbird flies straight up into the blue sky. Like an elevator. I am in awe not only of their abilities but their ability to fill my heart with joy every time I see them.

This moment is saturated in peace and yet I want to leave. This is always true for me. I have such a restless soul. When something is peaceful and beautiful, I appreciate it but then want to explore something new. I’ve come to accept this about myself.

I move a small snail off the pavement. It’s dry and would take a long time for it to reach the grass. It’s a small act of kindness. It will die anyway. Maybe today. Maybe by a small child climbing the enormous cedar tree I placed it under.

But we do what we can, we tend to what is in our reach. Reminds me of this quote by one of my favorite teachers:

“Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach.” ~Clarissa Pinkola Estes

The other day in yoga I was in “Happy Baby” pose and suddenly I felt very small. And vulnerable.

I found myself saying, “It’s okay, sweetie. I’m sorry that you were hurt. I’m sorry that you were lied to. I’m sorry that has made it hard for you to trust people.”

I started crying as I thought of all the people that I have loved. All the people that I haven’t treated as kindly as I wished. And all the people who haven’t treated me as kindly as I wished.

I just let myself really feel that sadness. Then I whispered,

“It’s okay. I forgive you.”

Then my body just relaxed and I felt something shift inside me. Like a lotus flower opening. I opened to that feeling of deep compassion for myself and others and awakened to the realization that we are doing our best at any given time. It’s often only through a reflective practice that I realize that I could have done better. And how I could have done better. Even with that kind of practice, I still mess up, because I’m a messy human.

The randomly-chosen word of the day is world from Stand Still Like the Hummingbird by Henry Miller. I’m going to offer the entire paragraph that it came from because it’s so fantastic. It will serve nicely as today’s quote:

Frankly, if we must play with this idea of saving the world, then I say that in making an aquarelle which pleases me–me, not you necessarily–I am doing my share better than any cabinet minister with or without portfolio. I believe that even His Holiness, the Pope, little as I believe in him, may be doing his part too. But then, if I include him I must also include such as Al Capone and Elvis Presley. Why not? Can you prove the contrary? (p. 83)

I cannot prove the contrary. In fact, I think it’s true that we’re all doing our best, all learning from one another, all have our part to play in each other’s unfolding. The world certainly doesn’t need saving but we do. We need more love and appreciation and less condemnation. More patience and tenderness. More play and delight.Read more “bricolage project day 22 [world]”→